by Alan Collins
Once inside her mum's semidetached cottage, where a huge mulberry tree in the tiny front yard excluded any light from penetrating, Shirley Compton and Sampson Collins used the gloom to advantage, cuddling and cooing while his future ma-in-law banged around in the kitchen pretending not to see. After the meals he had enjoyed in the homes of his last three wives and his in-laws, Ma Compton's roast mutton, leathery steak or the gut-heaving smell of thrice-used dripping that was the starting point of all her dishes, made my father beg off eating there. He preferred the spartan meals at the Travellers' Club or the new Chinese cafes springing up along the Bondi waterfront.
By now Cissy's pathetic little pieces of fried fish were gone. The adults drank tea, I had flat lemonade from days ago. I left my seat and sidled up to my father. Looking up at him and the hairs that grew in abundance in his nostril garden, I pleaded, 'Will I . . . can I . . . call this one mum 'cause Bella didn't like it much, did she?'
'Ah, son,' he said, 'I reckon this one ' I mean Shirley - well, y' needn't worry, Alan, she'll take to you like a duck to water. Here, let's hear you say it. Go on, say: 'Hullo mum, glad to see ya'. He sat me on his knee like some bloody ventriloquist's doll with his hand up my jumper. Anxious to please this new father of mine, I recited it, not once but went on until my father put me down on the worn carpet.
It hadn't been much of a lunch; it wasn't the break in the Sabbath day that Uncle Harry was used to. Usually after his lunch, he snoozed in the armchair and then, having been terribly quiet (building card houses is not a noisy game!) I accompanied him down to Waverley Oval where he would watch the cricket while I played on the swings like the other kids. But today, my rumbustious father was centre stage, employing all his commercial traveller's wiles to sell Shirley Compton as wife to him and little homemaker to a motherless child.
Uncle Harry left the table and was now seated deep in his armchair, his eyes downcast and lips pursed in disapproval. By contrast, Cissy clapped her hands at my little bravura performance and told Sam, in between puffs, 'There, you can see how we've brought him up. She needn't worry about little Alan. Yes, bring her here tomorrow afternoon. I'll have him togged up right in his new clothes but you might need to get him new shoes soon, Sam.'
My father got up from the table and planted a kiss on Cissy's rouged cheek, brushed past her to Harry, grabbed his hand and pumped it up and down. He poured out his thanks to them for taking me in, reassured them he would give them another quid to cover my keep for the next week or so, by which time he and Shirley might have (and he sniggered) their own little love nest.
He pulled up his sleeve and stared ostentatiously at his Rolex watch with the gold band. (This was the same watch that, five years later when its movement was on its last tick, he gave me as a barmitzvah present.) 'Gotta go, Harry, Ciss, see ya tomorrow and I won't forget the cake.' He tickled me under the chin. 'How about chocolate, Alan, with cherries around it?' Then he was gone and I must say the small room seemed so much larger now.
Cissy cleared away the debris left from lunch and brought out a pack of cards to play patience. Harry took down a copy of the Haggadah, which told the story of the Jews'exodus from Egypt in the time of the pharaohs. He beckoned me to him. 'This is the story of the Jewish people running away from cruelty and looking for a home of their own.'
'Did they find it? Am I going to get a home of my own? What about a room with my own bed?' I lifted his arm and put it around my shoulder. 'Can you come with me?' I hastily added Cissy as an afterthought.
'We will always love you, Alan, even though . . .' He left the thought hanging in Cissy's smoke-laden air. He put his head close to mine. 'If you are not happy, Alan, you know you can come back to us.'
I thought about it and decided that if I got a real bed to sleep in and didn't wheeze any more from the smoke, I would never come back. Yet I stroked the old man's hand and whispered, 'Thank you, Uncle Harry, thank you very much.'
Once more I was learning about getting on. Mrs O'Donohue, scratchy nurse Martha, carbolic Matron McCechnie, pillow- soft Bella, Craven 'A' Aunt Cissy. Each left me with a tiny grain of knowledge.
I weighed up these women in my life and decided that none of them would fill the role of a mother. But then, what did I know about mothers anyway?
...4...
The short answer was nothing - buggerall.
Bobbed hair, perky breasts, narrow waist, sharp little animal teeth forever stained with carmine lippy and the slim ankles of a tango dancer - Shirley Compton had shown all this to the priapic members of the Commercial Travellers' Club. Mostly they only saw the top half of her as she leaned across the semicircle of the club's reception desk. To these Romeos of the road, Shirl provoked nocturnal emissions as they lay cold and alone in their narrow cots in cell-like rooms, their sample cases at the feet of their beds.
Only Sampson Collins could entice her out from her cedar cell with its lift-up flap to freedom. Did he employ the same wiles as ensnared my mother? No, Alva Davis was not one to take on rides on the Big Dipper or even in the groping darkness of the River Caves. She, may she rest in peace, went on my father's arm to the doilied afternoon tea at the Australia Hotel where the waiter knew him well enough to tip him the wink if any of his other ladies was also taking tea.
Bella! Now Bella was one for the Trocadero. The neonlit George Street dance palace was their big Saturday night out. There, to the music of the tuxedoed 30-piece dance band they glided, foxtrotted and jazz-waltzed and once won the lucky- spot dance. Sam's dancing pumps of the softest, most pliable leather were his pride and joy. In between Saturday nights, they lived in a soft suede nest with imported German shoetrees inside them. As Saturday night slid into Sunday morning, the dancing pumps snuggled up to Bella's diamante-studded stilettos under her bed, perhaps tapping out an accompanying rhythm to the rise and fall of the bedsprings.
Shirley and her Jewboy (her mother Agnes's charming classification) were meant for each other, if that encapsulated dancing, driving, talking rubbish, rooting practically non-stop until his cock protested and she welcomed relief through cystitis. If Sam stopped long enough to think back on his previous women, Shirley Compton would not stand the comparison except for one vital factor in her favour: she was a shikse, a gentile, a woman who did not bring with her the religious overburden of the Sydney Jewish community. Shirley was a social virgin, nothing known or to be gossiped over among the Bondi and Bellevue Hill Jews as they shopped or gathered at their hundred and one charity card nights.
The twentyfour years between Sam and Shirley later gave Agnes an extra sobriquet to hang on my father. He metamorphosed from Jewboy to 'old Jew' who was using her poor daughter for sex, sex, sex! This was possibly the only time her acid tongue spoke the truth. This stick insect of a woman rated a halfyearly ritual in the dark as more than generous on a woman's part. There was a studio photo of her on the mantelpiece in the Marrickville house. She was not ugly enough to frighten the horses (as Sam would say) - in fact, she typified the drabness of the suburb. She had lost her looks in the Depression by the time she became Sam's mother-in-law. Now she was devoid of the pleasure sense and was tough as fencing wire.
Shirley Compton married Sampson Collins in the Sydney Registry Office in 1936. There were no witnesses, unless you count an eightyearold boy told to sit on a governmentissue bench, be still and be quiet. I did as I was told but found some relief by picking the ladybird bug off the lily in the urn-like vase next to me. The delicate thing crawled over my fingers. Both of us were quite uninterested in the group of three huddled together in front of the big desk where a man in a shiny black coat droned away. Suddenly in that highceilinged room there was silence - the droning had stopped. I placed the ladybird back on the lily and looked up. My father had wrapped himself around Shirley and his mouth was pressed to hers. Agnes Compton's arms were folded tightly across her meagre chest. The clerk coughed meaningfully and the two broke apart. My father beckoned to me.
'Over here, Alan. Come and kiss your mum.' I
did not move, so Agnes, for the first time ever, laid a scrawny hand on me.
'Do as your dad says,' she said, then for my hearing only, 'Mum - I don't think.'
I stood up in my new clothes from Morry's market stall. I took a deep breath. What did Shirley smell of ? The thought, once alerted, was irresistible. I ran to her thinking she would bend down to me but she stayed upright. My father lifted me up to her and thrust me at her. Her arms remained at her side. Those perky breasts bored into my chest, the flimsy fabric of her dress was dragged down by our clumsy contact. I drank in her smell deeply. It came from her modest cleavage where beads of perspiration mingled with her necklace of tiny glass beads. Probably from Woolworths where there was nothing over two and sixpence. The scent came from the cheap end of the perfume counter featuring the rage, Californian Poppy. That was it. It gave off an intense sweetness that, had it been a food, would equate with golden syrup. I pulled back from her and my father let me down, rightly perceiving that there was no evidence of affection from either of us.
'Ah, don't take any notice of him, Shirl, he'll come around or I'll want to know the reason why.' This last was thrown in to show his new wife who was boss around here.
The registrar came out from behind his desk and shepherded us all out into the corridor. 'You're a lucky young shaver,' he said, 'new mum and all. Do as you're told and everything will be right as rain.' He didn't believe a bloody word of it. He went back inside, shaking his head at the folly of those who stood in front of him. I suppose he and the two clerks he had dragooned as witnesses had a lovely time comparing this drab little ceremony with others; perhaps the one difference was me - a skinny kid in itchy new marketstall clothes, defying the accepted view that Jewish kids were plump as saveloys.
The Ford tourer stood atthekerbside outside the Commercial Travellers' Club; it was palpably weary from its last journey over the crude roads of western New South Wales. My father had done his final 'sweep' of the state at the behest of McPherson Hotel Supplies. The publicans still had not recovered from the Depression and had no need of new glasses, were resigned to the heavy chipped crockery and the dwindling stock of cutlery pinched by down-and-outers. 'Sorry, Sam old son, the missus 'd kill me if I bought so much as a bloody teaspoon.' The carpet snake my father had kept coiled up on the back seat of the open car as a deterrent to thieves had gone to Taronga Park Zoo. 'Ganef ' he called it, Yiddish for robber. Now the Ford, once the envy of the other commercial travellers, was up for sale. My father's unused order book was now mine to scribble in. Lovely! It still had an unused sheet of carbon paper in the back. I had found the book stuck in the back of the rear seat, slipped it under my jumper and said nothing.
Out in the street once more, stared at by the lunchtime office workers, I felt a hand like a claw on my coat collar. Ma Compton pulled me away from Sam and Shirley, who were posing for a photographer offering instant pictures for a shilling. The picture man's head was now under a black cloth and his flailing arms and muffled voice directed my father and new mother where he wished them to stand. A bulb on a cable was pressed, a little juggling under the cloth, dunking something in the billycans, withdrawing them like a stage magician and voila! A shiny picture which this wonder-man deftly slipped into a cardboard frame. 'Oh, luvverly sir and madam, yer the best pair o' lookers I've shot today. 'Ere, 'ave a look for yerselves.' Sam came forward. The wonderman reminded him that it would cost him a deener (one shilling) to look. My father fished the coin from his fob pocket. Shirley said, 'Ask him for another for mum.' The photo man went through his tricks and came up with another copy. Ma Compton's claw took it like a dirty dishcloth. Nobody bothered to show it to me. In fact I didn't see it for a long time after - thirty years after, when I raked together the remains of my father's life left in a Bondi rooming house.
.... ....
Tagging along like a mongrel pup on a string, I followed my father and his shiny new wife and stick insect of a motherin law down the hill from the registrar's office and the smirking office workers until we hit George Street. The wedding breakfast was in the upstairs room of Sargent's cafe - upstairs where there were tablecloths, an electroplated cruet and a vase with a single carnation in it. The tucker was the same as downstairs - the famous or infamous Sargent's pies, a scoop of mashed potato and green peas. Dessert was ice-cream in a glass dish or a cuppa tea and a daunting slab of compressed bakehouse sweepings called a Chester cake. My father, the bon vivant, viewed it with disdain.
'Crikey, we coulda gone to the club for a spot o' lunch,' he spluttered but Ma Compton cut him short. 'You're not exactly flush with coin at the moment, are you?' She pulled out a chair and slammed me down into it. 'Besides, it'd be wasted on the brat.' And as an afterthought, grimly, 'I s'pose it'd better be my shout.'
That was me. The brat. For six years I would be the brat. I seldom heard my name pass her lips. Nor Shirley's either. I cannot recall my father protesting against this epithet, that his only son was now a brat, renamed by these two harridans who would rule both our lives. Each of the women, in her own way, soon devised for me an endless circle of scorn, misery and degradation that encompassed every waking and even sleeping moment. My father, too, was at their mercy; Shirley, with her thighs locked tight against Sam's entreaties, could only be accessed by extracting whatever tawdry junk she desired and reporting to him a string of lies regarding my behaviour with a vituperative, 'your brat done this' or 'I can't control your brat, take the strap to him, why don't you.' Ma Compton bore lying witness, but in a perverse way saved me from the worst strapping when my screams hindered her listening on the wireless to two harmless harpies, 'Mrs 'arris and Mrs 'iggs', whose near-ribald back-fence gossip was the sole source of her entertainment.
'Had enough, son?' my father enquired.
'Just look what he's left on the plate. Only eaten half the jolly pie but he damn soon put away the ice-cream. Didn't you, brat?' And she yanked me off the chair and propelled me towards the stairs. My father, at last showing a bit of gumption, put an arm around my shoulder. 'Well, I wasn't too shook on the pies meself.' The weight of his arm was oh so light and so fleeting and so memorable it carried me through the days to come. Shirley linked arms with her mother.
The four of us dawdled up Market Street, the women pausing and sighing in front of the Farmer's and David Jones windows. Finally we crossed Elizabeth Street and caught the Bondi tram, where the two women went into the enclosed section while my father and I sat in the wildly open bit of the tram where smoke from a dozen different fags and pipes blew deliciously around me. I inhaled shag, ready-rubbed, fine-cut, Virginian, Rhodesian, and managed to feel just a teensy bit light-headed. Sam lit up the last of his tailor-made cigarettes, the conductor took a penny for me and fourpence for each of the adults. My father remarked, 'Best bloody value around, son.' He gave me a Cook's Tour as the tram left the city.
'Victoria Barracks, look at the big guns outside, Alan. Ah, now there's Paddo Town Hall - had some good times there dancing. Centennial Park - all those lovely lassies up there in white marble.' He nudged me in the ribs. 'Got no clothes on, mate. They were the days, eh?' The tram passed through Bondi Junction and paused before its death-defying plunge down the hill towards Bondi Beach. As it came out of the cutting, the glorious beach shone like a jewelled crescent. Its perfection was marred by the two monstrous concrete piers that poked into it like pigs' snouts. My father stood up and pulled the stop cord. 'Hope the ladies know where to get off,' he called as he ran back to their compartment. He went to help his mother-in-law but she shook him off.
The street sign said 'Francis Street'. Our little party reformed. This time Shirley linked her arm through Sam's, the stick insect behind and me being urged by her to keep up. Why did I drag my feet and listlessly kick the heads off the daisies?
It seemed a very long time since my father had called that morning at Uncle Harry's to collect me. My few clothes were bundled up but my father said he would get them later. I was dressed quite nicely in the clobber bought
from the market stall and put aside for this occasion. Aunt Cissy had spilled cigarette ash on my pullover but it hardly showed; Uncle Harry had levered himself out of his armchair and hugged me close. 'I hope you know what you are doing, Sam,' he had said. 'The boy has a home here, you know.' At this I started to cry. The tears mingled with the ash and made a tiny clot, which Cissy mopped up with the edge of the tablecloth. Uncle Harry squeezed my hand and when I opened it there was a shilling in my moist palm. Gripping my shoulder, Sam started to edge towards the door. He mumbled his thanks to Harry and Cissy Cohen, put a pound note on the table and steered me out into the morning light.
In less than an hour he was due to meet his bride at the Registry Office. We had sat on the tram to the city; neither of us spoke, which was not surprising given that we had spent so little of our lives together, and shared few of those happy or otherwise occasions supposed to make for childish memories. I looked at the women on the tram, imagining which would make a good mum for me, but by the time we alighted I had rejected them all in favour of sweet-smelling, pillow-soft Bella. For those who professed some affection for me, I was still 'poor Alva's boy'.
....5....
My father's sister Fanny, like the other women in my life, had her own distinctive smell - definitely not a perfume, decidedly a smell. The only time she didn't smell was when she was jammed into her wooden coffin at the Jewish funeral parlour and even then she was faintly redolent of disinfectant, probably Lysol. On the mercifully few occasions she came close to me she reeked of musk and left me lightly dusted with English Rose talcum powder. A devout spinster, Aunt Fanny viewed my father's marital misadventures as evidence of the perfidy of men and the gullibility of women. As with men, so with male children; being her nephew gained me no kudos. I was the palpable living evidence of her brother's weakness for women and, had she known what libido was, Frances Brunetta Collins would have hung it around his neck, a priapic albatross. All of which is a shame because a sympathetic aunt for a lonely little boy would have been just wonderful. Fanny never met Shirley, my father's new shikse bride, but would have called on the wrath of their deceased parents for added condemnation of his foolishness.